Here’s the Story

I wrote a book called The Forest for the Trees and it’s an advice book for writers. For four years, I blogged every day about the agony of writing and publishing, and the self loathing that afflicts most writers. A community of like-minded malcontents gathered and thus ensued a grand conversation. Now, the most popular posts are gathered in Greatest Hits ( a work in progress) Gluttons for punishment can scroll through the archives. If I've learned one thing about writers, it's this: we really are all alone. Love, Betsy

Winner in the Amazon War

Edan Lepucki’s Novel ‘California’ Gets a Boost From Colbert

Edan Lepucki with her book. Orders for it soared after Stephen Colbert cited it.CreditLeah Nash for The New York Times

LOS ANGELES — Nobody expected much from Edan Lepucki’s debut novel. Her publisher planned a tiny first printing of 12,000 copies. She was assigned to an editor with almost no experience. Was there a marketing budget? How cute of her to ask.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Ms. Lepucki,33, won the literary Lotto.

A few weeks ago, the late-night television hostStephen Colbert began attacking Amazon for discouraging customers from buying titles from his publisher, Hachette Book Group. But Mr. Colbert picked another Hachette author — a startled Ms. Lepucki — as the focal point of his campaign against Amazon.

“We will not lick their monopoly boot,” he said of Amazon on “The Colbert Report” beforeexhorting viewers to preorder Ms. Lepucki’s post-apocalyptic “California” from independent bookstores. The Amazon-Hachette brawl, Mr. Colbert explained, “is toughest on young authors who are being published for the first time.”

Ms. Lepucki, watching TV at home in suburban San Francisco, watched Mr. Colbert hold up “California” with a mixture of elation and nausea. (She had been alerted a few hours in advance to watch.) And then he did it again a few nights later, this time challenging viewers to buy enough copies to get the novel on the New York Times best-seller list. He also recommended “California” to his 6.6 million Twitter followers.

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Madeleine Sargent shipping copies of “California.”CreditLeah Nash for The New York Times

“I felt kind of icky to be benefiting from this fight,” Ms. Lepucki said. “At the same time, the opportunity to reach readers is a fantasy.”

“I did still wonder whether anyone would care,” she added.

Oh, they care. “California,” which arrives on Tuesday, is now one of the most preordered debut titles in Hachette history, according to a company spokeswoman. Ms. Lepucki’s agent is negotiating rights with the producer Gregg Fienberg and Killer Films. Little, Brown and Company, the Hachette division behind “California,” has increased the initial print order and doubled the length of her author tour.

Ms. Lepucki found herself in Portland, Ore., this week to sign 10,000 copies of her novel for the independent superstore Powell’s Books, where “California” hit No. 1 on the best-seller list after Mr. Colbert directed viewers there.

“Occasionally, my brain would overheat, and I’d forget how to write,” she said of her signing session. “My signature is like a squished spider.”

How Ms. Lepucki ended up as perhaps the only author to benefit from the Amazon-Hachette spat over pricing is a tale of almost unbelievable luck. And it has a twist: Her husband, Patrick Brown, is employed, in a sense, by Amazon. He works for Goodreads, a social network and peer recommendation engine for books; Amazon acquired it last year.

“Amazon has historically been a bully, and I don’t shop there,” Ms. Lepucki said. “But I love Goodreads. For the record. And my marriage.”

Mr. Colbert’s promotion of “California” started with Sherman Alexie, an anti-Amazonian and National Book Award winner for “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” Mr. Colbert invited Mr. Alexie on his show and asked him to bring a book by an author penalized by Amazon’s refusal to take Hachette preorders. Mr. Alexie said that he asked Hachette for a few advance copies of books by debut authors to peruse.“California” was on the top of the stack. “I honestly suspected it wasn’t going to be my kind of book — too earnest,” Mr. Alexie said in a telephone interview. “But I started reading it, and it turned out to be an earnest page turner.”

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Ms. Lepucki signed thousands of copies of “California.”CreditLeah Nash for The New York Times

With its post-apocalyptic setting, “California” mines a very busy vein in contemporary fiction. But Ms. Lepucki sees it as a love story. A young couple, Frida and Cal, have fled the ruins of Los Angeles to make a home in the wilderness. Everything changes when Frida becomes pregnant, and they leave isolation for a strange settlement filled with threats.

It seems impossible that a story with such dark undercurrents could spring from someone so laid-back and gregarious. Over breakfast in Los Angeles, where she grew up, the freckled Ms. Lepucki displayed a surferish vibe, right down to the wet blond hair that she twisted to the side as she spoke. Still, her eyes, which are a striking shade of blue, had a tendency to flash mischievously.

“I have a darker imagination than most people,” she said. “If you don’t ponder the end of the world on a regular basis, I don’t think you’re really human.”

Ms. Lepucki winced when asked if the couple in “California” is modeled on her and her husband. It’s an easy guess to make, especially since she became pregnant with their 3-year-old son, Dixon Bean, while writing.

But no. “I’m madly in love with my husband, but it’s not us,” she said. “People seem to hate Frida, so I hope I’m not her.” (Her mother-in-law’s response to the book: “I’m sad she killed me in a blizzard.”)

Ms. Lepucki is a graduate of Oberlin College and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is the founder and director of Writing Workshops Los Angeles, which has drawn 1,300 participants since it began in 2008. She is also known in book circles as a writer for The Millions, a highbrow literary website.

“California” is actually her second novel. But the first, a disturbing story about teenage girls that her agent, Erin Hosier, called “the novel equivalent of a Harmony Korine movie,” failed to sell to a publisher. “It was overly ambitious,” Ms. Hosier said. “We finally stopped trying to sell it, because the rejection became too embarrassing and painful.”

That put more pressure on “California.” “You really can’t fail twice in a row if you have her credentials,” Ms. Hosier said.

Even before the boost from Mr. Colbert, “California” was receiving praise from respected novelists like Jennifer Egan and Ben Fountain and popping up on summer reading lists. Little, Brown ultimately printed 60,000 hardcovers.

But insta-fame feels more than a little weird, and she confessed to feeling awkward about the experience of being interviewed. She had another confession to make, too: Yes, she shuns Amazon, but just to be honest she did once buy a tin of Bag Balm, a salve first developed to soothe cow udders. “I had a chapped elbow,” she explained.

Yep, and the folks at Powell’s are mighty happy about it. Such a great story. Congrats. I’ll hop down there tomorrow with my red, white and blue on and buy a copy. I might even snap a pic or two and report back!

Not only this is good news from the perspective of “showing Amazon a thing or two,” but it was interesting to read all the little tidbits about pub’ing tucked in between. (“was there a marketing budget? How cute of her to ask”) Agree on the 12,000 copy first printing by Erin, I thought pub’s would go maybe 5,000 for a first. Just enough to make it worth their while.

That you are posting this to all of us out here in no man’s publishing land is great. Thanks B, it makes me want to search for my 60s banners and desert boots and start marching.
Now I’ll stay home and make my statement with plastic.

Congratulations Edan Lepucki! I’m guessing this is a good book or else Stephen Colbert wouldn’t recommend it (or I wouldn’t be reading about it here), but how many people will buy “California” based solely on Colbert’s crusade then start reading only to find out it’s a little darker than they may have bargained for? And what will Amazon do in retailiation? It’s a kind of odd battle really, but probably not the strangest one in the world of publishing.

Wow, MikeD. Sure you don’t want to add an outbreak of smallpox and a Sarah Palin presidency to your “congratulations”? Here’s a thought just for you: Wanna-be authors should munch on their sour grapes in private and shut the fuck up.

Congratulations Edan and Erin. Anybody who really cares about good writing will rejoice with you whole-heartedly. This recognition of your talent and dedication is well-deserved and righteous.

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